I went to my first divorce support group meeting last week. They had a clever way of greeting guests, saying, “We’re sorry you’re here, but we’re glad you’re here.” It was everything the flier promised – supportive people who’ve all been where I am now – but the empathy was so palpable at times, I couldn’t maintain my composure. So I sat in the hallway for part of the meeting, able to hear the presentation, without drawing attention to myself.

At one point, the meeting’s host likened divorce to the refrain in the children’s book, Going on a Bear Hunt: “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it!”

I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how many times we read that book to our boys. There were plenty of inane children’s books that I dreaded reading at bedtime, but this wasn’t one of them. It’s one of the books I kept, when others were happily given away, and still lives in the hope chest at the foot of my bed.

Now I’m stuck thinking about that painfully accurate metaphor and all the things I’m having to “go through” because they can’t be skipped, no matter how badly I want to. The deep, cold river. The thick, squelchy mud. The dark, gloomy cave.

Today, I tried working on creating more playlists for when I’m driving or working around the house, and want to listen to music. The randomness of Pandora is too risky these days, considering 75% of songs are about love – newly found, unrequited, long and lasting. But, in order to curate a safe set of songs, from music I already own or can access for free, using Amazon Prime, I had to go on a bear hunt.

Our Amazon account – like so many things – was shared and filled with both his music and mine. I always knew he used the account more than I did, but I had no idea how much, and untangling our music lists meant going through the collection artist by artist, song by song. It felt more like I was sorting through the music of my 15-year-old son, who turns his computer screen away when I walk into the room and has only one answer when I ask what he’s listening to: “Nothing.” I didn’t recognize half of the artists or songs he’d saved. And you’d think that would make them easier to delete, than the ones we’d listened to together, but I think they were even harder to scroll through.

Did he think I wouldn’t like them, so why bother sharing them? Or did sharing them with me never cross his mind? When and how did he discover new artists and new songs? Where was I?

Every click on “remove from my account” was like walking through the thick, squelchy mud, or the long wavy grass, or the deep cold river – I felt each one. But I got through it.

I’m not sure yet if the goal is for me to actually find the bear or just survive the hunt. Maybe it’s both? Maybe it’s neither. Or maybe it’s the act of repeating, over and over, “What a beautiful day! I’m not scared.”